Millions move into tier 3 of virus rules in England

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Before we end today's live coverage, here is a round-up of today's main international coronavirus stories.

• The EU has announced that it plans to start vaccinations across its 27 member states from 27 December, if the EU regulator approves the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is due to meet on Monday to evaluate the vaccine which is already being rolled out in the US and UK
• French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for Covid-19 and is self-isolating for seven days, his office said. Several other European politicians who have been in contact with him are now isolating as a result. His wife, Brigitte Macron, 67, is also isolating but so far shows no symptoms, her office said
• Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf says the country has failed in its efforts to tackle the coronavirus. In excerpts from a TV programme to be broadcast on Monday, he said many people had died and the country hadn't been able to help them. Sweden is one of the few countries in Europe not to have imposed a full lockdown
• US regulators are considering whether to grant emergency authorisation to a second coronavirus vaccine. Trials suggest the Moderna vaccine has a similar success rate - about 95% - as the Pfizer-BioNTech jab cleared for use last Friday

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A US congressman announced that he tested positive for coronavirus hours after giving an address to fellow lawmakers on the floor of the US House of Representatives in Washington.

South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson spoke on Wednesday to praise President Donald Trump for his role in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rollout, which began this week.

“The life-saving Covid-19 vaccine that he promised to deliver has arrived in record time. Hallelujah,” he said.

He later said in a statement that he would be quarantining over Christmas. "Thankfully I feel fine and do not have any symptoms," he said. "It is so important that we all do our part to help prevent the spread of this virus."

US Interior Secretary David Bernhardt - who oversees US national parks and federal lands - also tested positive on Wednesday. He was tested before a cabinet meeting with President Trump, and did not attend the meeting as a result of his infection.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also skipped the meeting. He is currently isolating after he was exposed to someone who was infected.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to critics who claim his country has ordered enough doses of Covid vaccine to inoculate the country's population five times over and is depriving poorer countries of the life-saving drug.

In his first admission of mistakes he made during the pandemic, he told a local TV station that he had wished he began ordering PPE as soon as reports began emerging from China of a new pandemic.

“At the beginning of the pandemic in March and April, where they were real concerns about frontline health workers who were reusing masks and having to bring them home and wash them, that was something that I would have loved to have been able to avoid,” he told City-TV on Wednesday.

"We’re fine now, but in those first months, I think we needed to be readier,” he said.

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“There’s lots of things we’ve learned, but one of the things we learned through the scramble on PPE was to be early on vaccines.”

Canada has ordered more vaccine per capita than any other country in the world, according to a Reuters analysis. Already some 414 million doses have been ordered for the country's 38 million citizens.

Canada began vaccinations on Monday with the Pfizer-BioNTech drug. Officials are hoping the Moderna drug will be swiftly approved, as it is easier to transport to the more far-flung Arctic corners of the vast country.

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Weighing up whether or not to go ahead with festive plans is going to be a really difficult decision for many of us.

As infections rise and worries about the festive period grow, the BBC's Hazel Shearing has spoken with some families in the UK who are deciding Christmas isn't worth the risk.

The usual restrictions on social contact are relaxed between 23 and 27 December, allowing up to three households to mix indoors over the five-day period - but the prime minister has urged "extreme caution".

Read more here

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For Nick Licata, an English teacher from New Jersey, snow storms are usually a cause for celebration as they come with days off work.

But this year “there is no celebration,” says the 51-year-old. Because of Covid-19, he has been teaching remotely from his basement and will keep doing so during the storm.

The first major winter storm of the season made its way up the East Coast on Wednesday, affecting as many as 60 million people across 14 states. Some areas in Pennsylvania and New York could see two feet (60cm) of snow.

Snow storms happen every year in the US - but like everything in 2020, the snow storm feels different this year.

"They usually close everything down and the traffic gets so bad... but this storm feels different," says Olga Zhukov, 30, a dog-walker and barista.

"The city was already slower paced because of Covid - sometimes it doesn't feel like New York City because the usual hustle and bustle is just not happening."

And working from home in the pandemic has one benefit in a snow storm - no commuting.

Licata says his drive home in November 2018 took 12 hours "when an unexpected storm left the city unprepared". While this year the snow storm does not mean a day off, at least it also means no commuting, he adds.

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Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has been speaking about the decision to stagger the return of secondary school pupils in England next term to give schools time to set up a Covid testing scheme.

Asked why he had waited until now to announce this change, he said the "staggered testing" would ensure children spent "the maximum amount of time in school by reducing the amount of time they're having to be absent [and] reducing the number of children who are having to self-isolate".

He told the BBC's Nick Eardley the move would make sure that children, parents and teachers have "absolute confidence" about pupils going to school.

Challenged on why he had threatened to sue some councils after they asked schools to move teaching online before Christmas, the education secretary said: "At every stage we will take a robust and strong stance to ensure schools are open", citing comments by Prof Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, that children were best served when at school.

Williamson said the Covid tests would not be mandatory - but said parents "want to see their children having the opportunity to go into school and maximise the amount of time in the classroom".

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Portugal's Covid-19 vaccination programme is to start with a few thousand health professionals, the government has said.

It came after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced vaccination would begin across the EU between 27-29 December.

Speaking at a daily briefing, health minister Marta Temido said that Portugal expected to receive 9,750 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in time to get its programme under way in the period mentioned by Von der Leyen.

"Given the size of this batch it will be focused on health professionals, in that they are the ones on the frontline who can help us to protect the rest," the minister said.

Care home residents and staff, as well as people aged over 50 with certain serious health conditions, are still to be inoculated in the first phase of the programme, but a "subgroup" of frontline health workers will receive the first few thousand doses, she said.

A further 300,000 doses of vaccine are expected to arrive from 4 January, she added.

The transport secretary added that the UK's safe travel list - which allows people arriving from certain countries to avoid self-isolation - will now be unchanged except for any "emergency removals".

Shapps said the next regular update will be on 7 January 2021.

The extra 11,000 cases from Wales in today’s UK figures (see our post at 17:00 GMT) may catch the eye, but what are the longer term trends?

Cases are rising again, more people are going into hospital but deaths, always the last to follow those trends, are still falling.

In Wales, confirmed cases are doubling roughly every fortnight, the fastest of the nations and regions in the UK.

They’re rising quickly too in the south east of England, roughly doubling every three weeks.

Scotland and Northern Ireland are seeing cases rise too, but more slowly, and even northern England, which saw the steepest falls during and just after lockdown, is starting to see cases rise again.

On hospitalisations, the number of people going into hospital with Covid is still falling in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

But in England those figures are rising again - and are now back to levels last seen in late April.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who spent a week in hospital intensive care after contracting coronavirus, is out with a new national advert in which he says he regrets having not worn a mask at the White House.

Christie, a Republican who has occasionally served as a Trump adviser, begins the video saying: "This message isn’t for everyone. It’s for all those people who refuse to wear a mask.”

"You know, lying in isolation in ICU [Intensive Care Unit] for seven days I thought about how wrong I was to remove my mask at the White House,” he continues.

"Today, I think about how wrong it is to let mask wearing divide us, especially as we now know you’re twice as likely to get Covid-19 if you don’t wear a mask."

Christie was infected in October after attending an event at the White House Rose Garden to celebrate Mr Trump's nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. The event features guests who did not wear masks or social distance, despite the raging pandemic.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood broke Covid rules by giving a speech at a dinner in London, the home secretary has said.

Mr Ellwood had defended his "well-intentioned attendance" at the event, saying it was "fully Covid compliant".

He said he was sorry coverage of it had "muddled the government's clear message as we head towards Christmas".

Read more here, or watch what Priti Patel had to say in the above clip.

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A panel of vaccine experts at the US Food and Drug Administration is meeting today to vote on whether to recommend approval to a second Covid-19 vaccine.

Unlike Pfizer's vaccine, the one produced by US company Moderna does not require ultra-cold storage and can instead be transported in regular freezers.

On Tuesday scientists at the FDA confirmed Moderna's data, which found the vaccine 94.1% effective in warding off coronavirus. It came after the new drug was tested on more than 30,000 volunteers.

If the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee determines that the benefits of Moderna's vaccine outweigh its risks, the FDA commissioner could issue full approval as soon as this weekend.

If that happens, doses of the latest vaccine would reach patients by Sunday.

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Hospitality businesses have been hit hard by lockdowns and restrictions caused by Covid-19. But what’s it been like for the workers on the front line of an industry dependent on people socialising?

Bartender Barney Burns, who works at a hotel restaurant in Hertfordshire, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money earlier he's several hundred pounds a month down compared to this time last year. Parts of Hertfordshire moving into tier 3 on Wednesday, he says, was a “real kick in the teeth” for him and his colleagues, and the hotel is now closed.

“Christmas is the big time for the hotel to make a lot of money, and the staff in tips,” he says.

“In the first few lockdowns I lost about £300 a month, which would have been the service charge top-up.

“My rent went up as well, my phone bills… losing quite a substantial amount of money this year has been quite tough for me. This time last year I got about £500 extra than I would have done this year.

“I’ll have to budget completely differently. It’s been really difficult not just for me, but for everyone in the hospitality industry. It’s a strange Christmas this year”.

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Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has tested negative for Covid-19, the Spanish government says.

Sánchez is in self-isolation because of his recent contact with French President Emmanuel Macron who had a positive test. The Spanish PM will remain in quarantine until 24 December, his office said.

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There will be a staggered return for schools after the Christmas break, the Welsh Local Government Association has said.

Online learning will continue at the beginning of term and schools will provide face-to-face learning for the majority of their pupils by 11 January.

A full return to the classroom is expected by 18 January at the latest.

A similar plan has been drawn up for secondary pupils in England.

• Read more about Wales' plans here

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Northern England is being treated differently to the South when it comes to coronavirus restrictions, according to leaders who are "disappointed" by the government's decision to keep all northern tier three areas under the toughest rules.

• In Manchester, city council leader Sir Richard Leese said the news the city would stay in tier three was "bitterly disappointing" and warned that without "a Covid-safe hospitality offer during Christmas week", there was a risk people would find other ways to socialise "which could increase the number of infections"
• In Leeds, council leader Judith Blake said she believed an earlier statement from Health Secretary Matt Hancock had given Leeds optimism it would be dropped from tier three to tier two. Ms Blake said: "It's the uncertainty, the sense that there is a changing of the rules and I think, quite honestly, a real sense of a lack of fairness in the way that some of the decisions are made."
• In Sheffield, city region mayor Dan Jarvis said local leaders had been "cut out of the decision-making process not even afforded the basic courtesy of being consulted, or informed in advance" about the decision to keep the area in tier three. He said the decision was "absolutely the last thing our communities and businesses wanted to hear, another hammer blow to follow so many others".

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US Vice-president Mike Pence will be vaccinated alongside his wife Karen Pence at a White House event on Friday.

Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, is hoping to "promote the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and build confidence among the American people," the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.

President-elect Joe Biden, who takes over the White House on 20 January, is expected to be vaccinated next week.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the line, but I want to make sure we demonstrate to the American people that it is safe to take,” he told reporters from his hometown in Delaware on Wednesday.

“When I do it, I’ll do it publicly so you can all witness my getting it done,” said the 78-year-old Democrat.

Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama have also pledged to be vaccinated on camera, in an effort to promote vaccines.

Recent polls have found that only around half of Americans say they plan to get the vaccine once it is available to them. Experts say at least 70% of the US population of 330 million will need to be vaccinated for social distancing measures to finally be relaxed.